


Ménage à Trois: The Crab Incident.

by Demmora



Series: Hunger Pangs AU [3]
Category: Hunger Pangs -- Joy Demorra
Genre: Freaky Friday - Freeform, Idiots in Love, Mostly Crack, Multi, No Plot, crackfic for new year, magical misshaps, ott character traits for funsies, some emotion, these three I stg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 04:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13228248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demmora/pseuds/Demmora
Summary: I let people on twitch throw words at me for writing a fic. This was the end result. Y'all got a lot of opinions on crabs.





	Ménage à Trois: The Crab Incident.

**Author's Note:**

> ✧*:･ﾟ✧HAPPY*:･ﾟ✧*
> 
> ･ﾟ✧NEW YEAR✧･ﾟ
> 
>  
> 
> From Joy & ETD

There was a loud bang, followed by a blinding flash of light and a small shower of what had once been **crabs**.

Nathan sat up, padding himself down with a groan. “What did you do?” he demanded, or rather that was what he tried to say around the shards of razor in his mouth. “Ow!”

“I don’t know,” Ursula said, then blanched uncharacteristically, skin turning sallow and grey as she clamped her hands over her mouth. “That’s not my voice…”

Outside in the next room there was a loud bang, followed by another as the door to the lab burst open, slamming against the stone wall hard enough to bounce and cause sparks.

“You’re damn right it’s not.” Nathan said, face set into a very Ursula-esque scowl. “What in the name of unholy serendipity did you _do_?”

 

Vlad looked down at himself, holding his hands up. He was still wearing his signet ring, but it was red, not blue and there were others ones there too, along with a multitude of bangles and beads around his wrists.There was a faint sheen of **glitter** on his skin too, as though he was wearing body powder.

“Um,” he said, running his tongue along his upper teeth in a habitual gesture of nervousness and finding rows of perfectly smooth straight teeth. “I don’t...it wasn’t supposed to do that…”

He looked up again. It was rather disconcerting to see himself looking back, even if Nathan seemed more preoccupied with running his tongue over the length of fang in his mouth, mimicking Vlad’s own habit. He winced a moment later, clamping his hand over his mouth as, predictably, he managed to bite himself. “Ow.”

“Stop that,” Ursula/Nathan scolded him, folding her arms crossly over her chest and frowning down at Vlad where he sat in her body. “Young man, you have about five seconds to tell me what you did or so help me gods I am going to get _annoyed.”_

“What I did?” Vlad demanded, pulling himself up and planting both hands on his hips, which were considerably wider than he was used to. “You were in here with me! What did _you_ do?”

Ursula/Nathan rolled her eyes, the expression strange on Nathan’s usually cheerful and congenial face as she came to lean against the desk, arms still crossed over the broad expanse of her newly acquired chest.

“I didn’t _do_ anything. I was just standing here watching. You were the one muttering about the ratio of **crabs** to **heat** ratio and” she gestured with Nathan’s giant hands, “poof.”

“Well it’s never done that before,” Vlad countered, the multiple bangles and pieces of shiny tack around his wrists clattering like a tambourine falling down the stairs as he waved a finger under her nose, “you’re the only new variable to my work. And will you _stop that._ ”

He turned to look at Nathan/Vlad, who guiltily jerked his fingers away from his mouth where he had been pressing his thumb against the pointed tips of Vlad’s fangs. “You’re going to blister my tongue if you keep playing with them.”

“But they’re _there._ ” Nathan/Vlad countered sullenly, drawing his knees up and resting his head on them in a petulant pout that was a little too close to the mark for Vlad’s comfort. “And it’s hard to speak, without biting my lip.”

“The struggle is real,” Ursula deadpanned, turning to look back at Vlad/Ursula and lifting an eyebrow. “You’d think he’d never had canines before.”

“I’m a _wolf_ then,” Nathan/Vlad retorted, the sound coming out cracked and wheedling in his throat and Vlad flinched. He didn’t sound like that, did he? Surely not…

“Why are you not freaking out?” Vlad demanded of him, and Nathan lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug.

“Neither of you are...I figure if you’re not screaming and she’s not screaming it can’t be that bad. You’ll just,” he wiggled his fingers mysteriously and Vlad and Ursula shared a look.

Ursula/Nathan’s face lost some of its sardonic edge mere seconds later, blue eyes turning wide.

“You can’t hear me…” she said, Nathan’s deep voice rising in pitch with her panic. “I was talking to you and you didn’t hear me! I’ve lost my powers! I haven’t not had my powers for...” she floundered, rounding to rummage around on Vlad’s workstation, throwing ingredients left, right and center. “Ever!”

“Okay,” Vlad said, reaching out to try and pull her back and finding he only came up to Nathan’s shoulder, and was forced to rise on tiptoe to pull her head down to meet his. It was a strange feeling, being so short.

When she finally relented there were tears shining brightly in Nathan’s blue eyes, and Vlad leant up further, pressing his lips to hers in a gentle reassuring kiss, something he had done a hundred times before, but now felt strange and new.

He grunted in surprise a moment later as he was shunted closer to Nathan’s body as long arms enveloped them both. Or tried to.

“I don’t like this,” Nathan said with Vlad’s voice, still lisping ridiculously around a mouthful of extra sharp teeth. “I can’t reach both of you, how do you do this with such short arms.”

“They’re not short,” Vlad sighed, retort muffled from being sandwiched between two much larger bodies. “You’re just ridiculously huge.”

“It’s torture,” Nathan said, resting his head on Vlad’s much shorter shoulder, nuzzling against Ursula’s voluminous hair in a bid to get closer to them. It felt unusually suffocating and Vlad suddenly understood why Ursula preferred to be the big spoon rather than in the middle.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, trying to sound reassuring, awkwardly patting at Nathan’s shoulders and only just managing to reach his middle back. “We’ll figure it out. Wait,” he paused, attempting to push back from Ursula/Nathan’s chest and grunting with annoyance when Nathan refused to give up his hold until Vlad kicked him sharply, wincing in phantom pain at the bruise he’d likely just caused to his own shin.

“Does that mean I have your power, and” he turned to look at Nathan/Vlad and covered his hand with his eyes. “Oh no.”

“What?” Nathan/Vlad asked, holding his hands up in a shrug, “What’s the matter?”

“Nathan,” Ursula said slowly, reaching out with a large steadying hand, “Put your arms down sweety.”

Vlad watched as his own dark eyes swivelled up towards his hands, where a faint blue haze had enveloped his fingers.

“Oh…” Nathan said, sounding very meek, and carefully lowered his hands like we was carrying a bomb.

“Okay, good.” Ursula breathed out, “now just...just stand there and don’t move. There’s a good lad.”

“Wait,” Nathan asked animatedly, though Vlad noticed he kept himself very carefully still. “Does that mean you can shapeshift?”

Ursula/Nathan’s gaze turned inward for a moment, as though searching for something. “It’s…” she said slowly, dragging her eyes back to the present to look at him. “It’s like having a very large dog in the room but not…that just wants to play…”

Nathan/Vlad smiled brightly, completely ignorant of how rude it was to do so with fangs. “Yep, that sounds about right.”

Ursula/Nathan’s face softened into something more like the real Nathan’s gentle smile as she looked at him, and Vlad snorted, fondly. Even out of his own body Nathan was too precious to be real sometimes. Vlad was quite convinced there wasn’t a **cantankerous** bone in his entire body. He wondered what that felt like.

“Right, so…” he said, self-consciously straightening the front of his... _dress_ ...and returning to look at the remains of his work desk. What had he and Ursula been doing again? Ah yes, the **_thermometer_ **.

“You touched me,” he said, giving Ursula/Nathan a careful look, “while I was mixing the crabs with the,” he gestured to the remains of the concoction that had been brewing on the cast iron cauldron now reduced to a puddle of melted metal on his workstation, still genty bubbling away to itself as it cooled into a molten heap on the scorched wood. “And something went...spark.”

“I overloaded the spell,” Ursula/Nathan said, closing her eyes and turning to look at him remorsefully. “I’m sorry, Vlad. I shouldn’t have assumed it was you....”

Vlad laughed, the sound coming out bright and high in Ursula’s voice. “I mean, it’s a fair assumption when something goes bang it’s my fault, but I’ll take it. Question is, how do we fix it?”

“I’m not sure,” Ursula admitted, reaching for a strand of hair that wasn’t there to chew on, and having to settle for the nail of Nathan’s thumb instead. “I think...well I mean it’s a transmutation spell, yes? We were trying to put the crabs into the flowers, to see if we could make a self defending rose against the aphids...except it bounced and hit” she waved a large hand, “us. And did something to our link...still doesn't explain why Nathan was hit, he was outside the room.”

Nathan/Vlad, with his arms still held firmly to his sides, frowned. “I resent the idea that you think mere bricks and mortar could hinder my love for either of you.”

“Fair enough,” Ursula/Nathan said, waving her hand in acceptance. Stranger things had happened to them than this, after all. “So in theory all we need to do is reverse the sp--”

A sudden knock at the door made them all freeze.

“What do we do?” Vlad demanded, turning to look at first Nathan/Vlad then Ursula/Nathan… “no one’s supposed to know about the magic…”

“Just act natural,” Nathan/Vlad said, leaning against the table in an easy, loose limbed slouch that was very much in character, making Vlad wonder just how closely his werewolf lover watched him when he wasn’t looking.

“Come in,” Ursula/Nathan said, voice sounding unnaturally deep as she self-consciously deepened her voice, and the door opened to reveal Nathan’s two youngest siblings, Bran and Lauchlin.

The twins were brought up short by the sight of the trio grinning at them so intensely that they very nearly stepped back out the  room. The tense paused was broken by Ursula who stepped forwards, Nathan’s arms outstretched as she reached for them. “Bros,” she said, definitely not acting natural. “What’s up?”

“Uh…” both twins said at the same time, “it’s after four. You said you’d come hunting with us…”

Ursula/Nathan’s expression remained blank until she blinked, nodding. “Right, yes. I said that. Yes...hunting. As a wolf.” she turned to look frantically at Nathan over Vlad’s shoulder. “This is fine…”

“Yes!” Nathan/Vlad urged encouragingly, “totally fine. Just like riding a horse. Except not. Because you are the horse.”

Vlad sighed, gently lowering his face into his hands.

“Yes.” Ursula/Nathan agreed still looking frantic as she allowed herself to be pulled from the room by Nathan’s brothers, eager to be outside and running through the snow with the winter wind in their fur. She threw one last panicked look over her shoulder at Vlad, pointing towards the table in an urgent gesture of “ _fix this_ ” before the door slammed shut, the **candle** light around the room guttering with the draft.

“Right,” Vlad said, dragging his fingers through his hair and cursing when he realized just _how much hair_ he had to deal with. “We need, twelve more crabs collected under the **celestial** light of the new moon, thirteen rose blooms collected at **midnight** , and—”

He paused, feeling Nathan’s hands **lightly** ghosting over the small of his back, drifting up his sides.

“Nathan.” Vlad said tersely, stepping slightly to the side. Ursula was apparently much more ticklish than he was. “Now is really not the time.”

Nathan made a soft sound of amusement, shaking his head. “I wasn’t...I just...does it always feel like this?” he asked, stepping back to **fiddle** with the line of one of Vlad’s cuffs, and Vlad caught a glimpse of how he must so often look to the others, nervous, unsure, _tired._ “Does it always hurt like this?”

Vlad remained silent for a moment, looking away then back to the table in front of him, trying to salvage some of the ingredients left behind. “Yes. Sometimes. Not all the time. Just...mostly…”

There was a moment of silence before Vlad felt Nathan pressing closer again, chin resting on the top of Vlad’s head as he was enveloped in a warm hug. It wasn’t as soothing as Nathan’s actual embrace—Vlad would be the first to admit he was a little too bony to give good hugs—but still it was something. He grunted in discomfort when Nathan squeezed tighter, the whalebone of Ursula’s stays digging into his sides. He glanced down with irritation, then looked back up again when he realized all that did was grant him a view down the front of the dress he was wearing.

“This thing is intolerable” he said, stepping out of Nathan/Vlad’s grasp and reaching stiffly for a mortar and pestle. “No wonder she’s always naked.”

Nathan/Vlad snorted again. “That’s likely part of it,” he agreed, flashing Vlad his own toothy grin at him. “I can think of two other reasons.”

Vlad rolled his eyes, wondering if this was also how Ursula felt all the time when dealing with both of them, or if he was just feeling more irritable than usual for _other_ reasons. He drew in breath when Nathan/Vlad’s hands came to rest lightly on his shoulders again, calm and placating.

“What can I do to help?” he asked, and Vlad allowed himself a moment to lean back against the shoulder behind him at head height. He was a good leaning height for Sue. That was nice at least.

“Help me braid this mop out of my face?’ he asked sweetly, knowing full well that if Ursula were in the room to hear him say that she’d have him on the floor demanding he take it back this instant.

“You’ll have to show me how,” Nathan laughed, the sound raspy rather than deeply in Vlad’s chest. “It’s the two of you that enjoy doing your hair and playing with clothes and pretty things.”

“Yes,” Vlad smiled fondly, remembering the other night when Ursula had painted his nails a midnight shade of lacquer, the chipped remains of which still visible on his ring and pinky fingers. “But we’re just so gosh darn pretty. Here, let me show you,” he said, taking a sizeable chunk of hair and beginning to separate it out to plait. “Over and under, just imagine you’re doing your military brocade.”

When his hair was _mostly_ out of his face, Vlad set to work reversing the spell. Occasionally he sent Nathan out for ingredients. He was only half way done with the lab door opened again and Ursula/Nathan staled in again, utterly naked and covered in dirt. There were twigs snagged in her brown curly hair.

“Like riding a horse.” she said, the sound coming out as a deep rumbling growl in Nathan’s chest. “That was nothing at all like riding a horse. Dragged behind wild horses, perhaps, but not riding.”

“But you’re alive,” Nathan/Vlad said, dangerously cheerful as Vlad/Ursula, wisely took a step back out of range. “Which is something.”

Ursula/Nathan’s jaw worked for a moment before she turned sharp blue eyes back onto Vlad. “Please tell me you’re done mixing this? If I have to go out there one more time and pretend to be Lord of the Manor I might just go lunar.”

“Nearly,” Vlad soothed, “I just need the final touch.”

He reached out, taking his own hand and placing it on the newly acquired cauldron. “Hold this.”

“And what are you going to do?” Nathan asked, looking nervous at being handed something that was bubbling and smelt faintly of seafood and roses.

Vlad glanced towards Ursula/Nathan, seeing the answering glow of mischief in those blue eyes as he leant up close to Nathan/Vlad’s ear, and pressed his lips to the side of his neck. “Make a spark.”

There was a loud bang, followed by a blinding flash of light and a small shower of what had once been **crabs**.

Nathan sat up, reaching up to drag the twigs out of his curly brown hair. “Did it work? Are we back to normal?”

“For a given value of normal.” Ursula muttered, rubbing at her eyes as though she had a headache. “Vlad?”

“I’m alive.” he said from his place on the floor, flattened into the ground by the force of Ursula’s magic coursing through him without her guided touch. “Kind of. Ah!”

He gasped with surprise as Nathan scooped him up off the ground, holding him tight in a one armed embrace as Ursula was likewise manhandled up into the air in the naked werewolf’s grasp.

“I missed this,” he bemoaned, squeezing them tighter. “I thought I’d never be able to hold you both again.”

“Oh my god,” Vlad coughed, struggling to claw his way free. “It was a whole two hours, you giant softy.”

“An eternity,” Nathan he carried on, ignoring Vlad, “of suffering. It was torture. Hell on earth. Being so smol.”

“I am not,” Vlad coughed again, nearly halfway out of Nathan’s grasp as Ursula began to laugh. “I am not _small._ I’m the same height as _you_.”

“Tiny,” Nathan said, smiling fondly as he leant in to kiss Vlad delicately on the nose when it crinkled with annoyance. “So tiny.”

“I should have transferred you into one of the crabs,” Vlad muttered. Sweeping his failed experiment off the worktable and into the giant waste bin at the end.

Ursula, now free of Nathan’s grasp and fussing with the line of her dress, turned to eye her other husband. “If he’s smol,” she began, drawing herself up to her full height that only reached his collarbone. “What am I?”

“Terrifying,” Nathan replied promptly. “She can deadlift me you know,” he said to Vlad, as though Vlad hadn’t been there when it had happened. “I’ve never felt so safe or vulnerable in all my life.”

“I know.” Vlad agreed. “It’s a firm but loving touch.”

“You’re both impossible,” Ursula informed them, reaching up to touch her hair, and pausing when her fingers met the braids. “What...what did you _do._ ”

Vlad and Nathan shared a look, then tried to shove the other out of the way in their haste to make it out the door at the same time.

Some things were just too dangerous to meddle with.

 

✧*:･ﾟ✧FIN✧*:･ﾟ✧


End file.
